After Dinner

“When’s the last time you saw her?” The constable asked. He fumbled nervously with his pencil and notebook as he waited for the mother’s histrionics to subside. He repeated the question.

“It was after dinner,” she sobbed. “She said she wanted to play with Emma.”

“And who is Emma?” The constable was glad that he had the page he jotted upon to occupy his sight. Better than peering into the wells of sorrow that this woman’s eyes had become.

“Nobody.”

“What do you mean?” the constable pressed. “What relationship does the missing child have with this Emma? Is she her sister, a neighbor, a friend or…”

“I told you,” the woman responded somewhat sharply, or so the constable thought, “She’s a nobody. She doesn’t exist. Emma is Millicent’s imaginary friend.”

“I see,” the constable said as he crossed out or underlined something in his notebook. It wasn’t clear which. “Where would she usually play with this imaginary friend? We’re simply trying to establish your daughter’s last known location.” The woman nodded, sniffing.

“Out in the garden,” she gestured through the glass-paned door that led from the kitchen where they stood to the back yard area. “She would sit on the wooden bridge that crosses the koi pond and chatter away at Emma… Herself, really I suppose… for hours.”

“Do ye mind?” the constable asked perfunctorily as he let himself out the back. He strolled into an area that was so beautifully manicured that it was like walking into the artfully controlled space and perspective of a painting. Banzai trees were arranged alongside the koi pond to create the effect of a miniature shoreline. Rounded river stones stood in for boulders. Under different circumstances, the constable would have found the scene quite relaxing. He walked from the back door to the bridge over the koi pond, examining the ground carefully with every step.

He stopped suddenly and stooped. There was a footprint, about the size that would match an eight-year-old girl, and it had a name and symbol engraved upon it. After inscribing a brief sketch and description in his notebook, he called the mother outside to see if she could confirm the footprint as belonging to her daughter. She said that her daughter wore black oxfords with a leather sole and a rubber heel. She identified the shoemaker as Michael Noon of Langton Street in San Francisco. She did not recognize the print he had found, nor could she account for the name engraved on the sole.

When the constable returned to the station, his best efforts could not find a cobbler who marked his goods with the name “Nike” anywhere in the state of California.

Ninety-three years later, the Alameda, California police department could not account for the sudden appearance of an eight-year-old girl named Millie. The couple who found her said that they thought she was an imaginary playmate of their daughter, Emma, until she suddenly appeared after dinner.